16Dec2009
Two Roads – Two Tribunals: Recent “Fork-in-the-Road” Interpretations
Until recently, no arbitral tribunal had found an investor’s claim under a BIT to be barred by a fork-in-the-road clause. Previous tribunals have found that for a fork-in-the-road clause to apply, the same dispute between the same parties must have been submitted to the local courts before resort to international arbitration and have drawn clear distinctions between contract and treaty claims.* The recent award in Pantechniki S.A. Contractors & Engineers v. Republic of Albania, however, suggests a different path.
In Pantechniki, Albania argued that Article 10(2) of the Greece-Albania BIT, which provides that either the investor or the host State may elect to bring the dispu [...]
